


White Tissue

by jolies_filles



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Drama & Romance, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Language, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Internalized Homophobia, Useless Lesbians
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29340813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolies_filles/pseuds/jolies_filles
Summary: "If Shelby ever did do something like that, to produce those noises, it would not be outside and it would not be so loud and inviting for everyone in the whole neighbourhood to hear. But she wouldn’t do something like that. Not again, anyway."*High-school exploration of Toni and Shelby's relationship from enemies to friends to lovers to... Toni not quite believing Shelby still cares for her, after everything that happened.Shelby's car is damaged and has to stay with Toni at the trailer park. They haven't been this close since last summer and what a summer it was.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 60





	White Tissue

It was often quiet; you would be surprised to hear. Night-time in the trailer park didn’t see too much action: clandestine, in a way. Though just because you couldn’t see it, doesn’t mean the action isn’t there. Toni could hear it – she always could. The jingle of keys. The quiet hushing of rushed children. The distorted conversation, or the sound of a television. Not that she knows who owns a television around this way but Rook’s always up to no good, Toni’s nosey neighbour. 

For the past week, Toni has been listening out for the distinct drop of the school day’s assignments, memos or whatever else the school deemed necessary for her to catch up on. She had assumed they had given up on her and they did for a time, but there is the distinct deposit of paper again, on the top of the stairs to her foster parents’ trailer. Toni turned to her front on the makeshift bed, space she made for herself in the back of a beat-up truck. She had filled it with most of her only possessions: books she failed to return to the library because she always moved around homes; bus tickets from her escapes out of town with Martha, and all those goddamn assignments. Nobody was using the truck, and everyone now knew that it was hers. 

From where she was laying, Toni could see quite clearly through the broken rear window of the pickup. She often stayed here, watching junkies knock-on at Rook’s; male callers drop by at Angie’s some doors down from her own, or police dropping off her stepbrother. Her favourite time of day, however, was watching her private courier drop-by; walk past Angie’s, the pile of tyres and stolen gear, past Rook’s and toward Toni’s current place of residence at the end of the cul-de-sac of towing cars, caravans and trailers. The walk would her bring her closer to Toni with the pickup parked just next door, under the trees and buried away. But she never saw Toni, the girl who could never believe her luck that someone’s trying so hard for her.

Toni thought, no, she was told that fighting doesn’t amount to anything good. But they’re wrong, they always have been. Toni’s had to fight her way out of some pretty sticky situations and she’s here to tell the tale. Granted, Toni’s often sporting a black eye or some busted knuckles, a fractured rib or two, swollen bones, maybe. It’s also ruined the only relationship she has ever cared about and has threatened to destroy her friendship with Martha on half a dozen occasions. But Toni’s here, she survived and she’s here because of that fire in her soul.

Martha sometimes says that Toni destroys everyone and everything around her. That’s probably true. The fighting has destroyed most of her chances at a stable family home but stable and happy are two different things so it’s difficult to know whether that really counts as a failure. It is destroying her education, on the other hand, and her chance at a basketball scholarship to get out of this hellhole. 

That’s why her personal courier arrives, every day like clockwork since Toni was suspended from school a week ago. She never used to come but Toni guesses the school never really cared about the maintenance of her education. The idea of a tutor, that’s a new thing. Toni’s sure it was the pressure of her basketball coach. Coach Klein’s a bitch and she often acts far too unethically to be considered a respectable member of the school staff, but she shares Toni’s fire. She can see her potential; her power. Coach Klein is the reason Toni can savour these moments: every day, well after the sun’s set, watching the blonde hair of her courier arrive to deliver Toni’s schoolwork. She bounces out of her own truck, one polished to pristine and not a scratch in sight, and immediately locks it. Not once but twice, just to be sure, looking around an environment that has become familiar but no less stressful to be in. 

The blonde walks slowly to Toni’s trailer, she always does. She observes her surroundings, stops and listens, does quick check-backs to her car to ensure it’s still there, waiting for her, waiting to take her back to reality. She looks at the pile of discarded tyres, white goods, electronics or furniture, whatever’s been thrown out. She examines it, like she’s doing an inventory. It’s amusing and Toni’s started to wonder if the blonde has noticed anything interesting about the junk pile. How there’s always something that doesn’t quite fit: a packet of Taki’s, one of her stepbrother’s obviously stolen Airforce trainers, or shiny gold medals that were, until recently, kept clean and stored safely away.

For a second, the blonde often slips away from view, eyes lingering on the pile, moving around it to update her inventory. Maybe a dog barks or Rook’s trailer door jumps but the courier doesn’t linger for long. She skips over to Toni’s, places down her schoolwork that is neatly wrapped in a bow to keep it contained and again, she lingers. She always looks tempted to knock but she would never be so foolish. 

Toni doesn’t understand why the blonde is never in a rush. She looks petrified to be there, nervous to leave her car unattended. But always proud when she’s made her delivery like it’s charity work or something. Toni knows she’s considered a charity case by most. Especially to the blonde. 

You see, they have known each other for some time. They met at the start of high school, assigned study partners, in fact, in biology. Though that didn’t last long because of Toni’s fighting and was often kicked out of classes before she even stepped foot across the threshold. They got on but were never close. For years they didn’t share a class and never dared speak to one another in the halls. Why would they? They come from different worlds. They share classes now, since the start of Senior Year, but Toni’s never in them. 

The blonde, Toni guesses, is helping her now because of what happened last summer. They were never supposed to cross paths, but fate tempted it. Of course, it was fighting that put Toni in that position. She fought Andrew, the local asshole, and paid in community service to cleaning the local church. Just for a month but it almost killed Toni, literally. 

Now, during the moments of hesitation where the courier almost knocks at her trailer, Toni feels compelled to break the eerie silence of a trailer park evening. Sometimes she howls, faintly though, like a wolf deep in the woods. Occasionally, she scratches at the trees with her pocketknife, imitating some kind of animal clawing its way through the park. Tonight, she opts for a moan. 

It releases from her lungs, mouth agape and Toni stifles a laugh when the blonde’s eyes widen, her own mouth opening in shock and her legs running as fast as they can to the safety of her pickup. The truck that’s still there, by the way. No scratches, no thrown eggs, no burst tyres, nothing. See, not much action here. Or not that you can see, anyway. 

For the next week, everything is the same. The weather is good this time of year and so Toni is still crashed out in the truck, picking through her George Orwell, waiting for her private courier service. The blonde arrives timely. She parks in the same spot, locks up the truck once and again for luck, and takes her walk past Angie’s and the mountain of shit – finding the second Airforce trainer and a bottle of Gatorade –, and Rook’s and then Toni’s. The ribbon around her classwork is pink this time. Cute but a little pretentious, Toni thinks. 

Martha told her once that her teachers don’t even bother creating a pile of work for Toni. The blonde waits around after lessons, makes her collection and wraps her own bundle. Toni’s not sure she believes her, but her best friend has too good of a heart to lie about something so mundane. But to Toni? She doesn’t think it’s mundane. It’s effort, she doesn’t see that much. She would see it from Martha more, but she has her own shit going on moving to adult classes in her dance group. Toni’s proud of her but she also misses her best friend. 

So, Toni watches and she waits for her moment. Until there’s movement in the corner of her eye. She’s watching the blonde, it’s not her. She hasn’t moved, still contemplating knocking on Toni’s trailer. Toni leans onto her elbows, peering over and around the body of the rundown truck. For a while, nothing. She thinks maybe Angie has a visitor, staying later than usual, but Toni knows she stops working when the sun goes down. Angie says it’s safer that way, but Toni knows that Angie doesn’t care very much for her own safety. Toni understands her neighbour a little more when she spies her at the weekends, at the thrift shops in town, swapping used puzzles for new ones.

Maybe it’s Rook. His customers can get nasty, some overstay their welcome. Most, though? They’re a delight. Toni chills with them sometimes when her foster mother, like Angie, has visitors paying for her time. The local junkies, the ones discarded by the overzealous, biblical cult movement of the townies, they’re often just trying to find peace. Rook can provide that, and then some. Toni sympathises with them, but she knows that doesn’t solve anything; doesn’t feed them or heal them. They tell her not to follow in their footsteps and she promises not to – only if she can have one more drag of a shared joint. 

Of course, she can, the cannabis is bought for Toni anyway. God forbid they let her touch the harder stuff, Rook would never invite them over. They are a distinguished group and trouble’s never too far away, but they’re good people. They watch over Toni, even if she thinks she has overpowered them with her intellect and charisma, charming them into submission and allowing her to smoke even when they discourage her. If only she understood what people choose to protect her from.

There are footsteps, treading so quietly but Toni hears them. The blonde hasn’t noticed, she’s still looking at the trailer. But Toni’s ears perk up and she leans from her elbows to her hands, still hiding in the shadows to avoid prying eyes. The footsteps are walking – no, running – further away from her, growing fainter and fainter. Where did they come from? The woodland behind her? Rook’s? Her own trailer’s side door?

Fuck, the truck. The polished, painted, crisp one. The truck that sticks out like a sore thumb in this area, demanding attention, screaming money and status. They display the two signs of privilege nobody around here has experienced a whisper of. Toni would jump and she would run. But she doesn’t want to scare the blonde or indicate she’s been watching her. No, that would be embarrassing. 

Not just footsteps, a whisper of air. It’s faint, it’s obscure. When there’s the distinct sound of a popping tyre, Toni knows. She stretches, panicked, and leers over the top of her truck to spy those fucking Airforces, running away into the street and out of sight; his sidekick with him. The blonde has turned quickly, now frozen at the sight of deflating tyres on her escape truck. She wouldn’t run after him; Toni knows she isn’t that stupid. But she does rush back to her vehicle, bend over and examine the slashed tyres. Toni looks away, knowing she shouldn’t ogle. It’s tough but Toni’s resilient if anything.

She’s also guilty. Really fucking guilty. Toni should have known the blonde’s car wouldn’t be safe here. She should have known the blonde, herself, wouldn’t be safe here either. But every night for the past two weeks, she’s still and she watches, and she doesn’t do anything to help her courier. She doesn’t run after her little shit of her stepbrother although when she does get her hands on him, God forbid. Her knuckles ache at the thought: already bruised but their future is bloody and splitting open. 

The blonde examines the damage to her car, Toni can see that. It’s quiet but the shaking of her arms and the rigid movement of her shoulders make it clear she’s sobbing. She gets to her knees, touching delicately the tear to one of her front tyres, glancing back at the equally damaged one at the rear and then looking around her surroundings. It’s not cold, but it is dark. The silence is eerie. It’s comforting to Toni but not to the unfamiliar. 

She feels like she’s eavesdropping, Toni does. She already feels guilty for allowing the car to be damaged, she knows it wouldn’t be fair to watch the blonde have a breakdown, all alone in an area that is nothing like home. She doubts the blonde will accept her help but Toni should take responsibility, accept that she should have been protecting her. Even if the girl did fuck her up. 

“Shelby!” The girl jumps, as you would expect, but when Toni jumps out of her truck, away from the shrub and into the streetlight, she places a hand to her heart and sighs. “Do you need help?”

“Have you been watching me?” They’re still a distance away. Toni moving gingerly toward another beat-up truck that was not in this shape when it arrived. She walks past the pileup of junk, noticing the basketball champion medal from her junior days that she placed a little over a week ago has gone. She shouldn’t be surprised by the kind of people that hang about this place. Some people are stupid: it’s worthless. You can’t buy drugs or sex with zinc alloy or whatever else makes up scrappy metal. 

Shelby’s on her feet but she’s wringing her hands together: twisting and turning them just for something to do. She isn’t sure how she feels with Toni walking toward her, clad in her usual attire of a tank top and basketball shorts reaching her knees and entirely a size too big. Toni’s smaller than Shelby remembers. It’s like she hasn’t seen her in forever. 

Shelby’s usually the first to class and when Toni does arrive, it’s late and she sits on the back row, away from most people and head buried in a book. She knows that because their teachers always call her out, demanding she pay attention. Toni replies with something sarcastic about paying attention to something more interesting than the class, or something annoyingly charismatic about our generation losing touch with the world of fiction and she’s broadening her intellect. Either way, Toni gets sent out and Shelby never sees her in the halls for the rest of the day. She hears it’s because Toni spends all of her time in the gym, throwing baskets and training for her games. 

Alright, she doesn’t hear that. She knows that when she walks through the corridor accessing the chemistry lab – a class she doesn’t have to attend anymore – she can see from the third-floor window and directly into the gym’s glass roof that presides in the building next door. Toni’s always there. In fact, it’s funny. She’s always looked small to Shelby from that distance but standing in front of her, it never seemed so obvious. She seemed taller last summer. More self-assured, confident. Here, she looks lost. Toni doesn’t say anything but crouches down beside Shelby, examining the split tyres, and moves around the truck verifying they have all received the same treatment. 

“Fucking idiots,” Toni laughs, “everyone knows you should only tear three. Four and it’s an insurance claim!” She looks proud of herself for coming up with that one, but Shelby isn’t impressed. That car, it’s her pride and joy. She’s free with that car. She can drive where she likes, with whoever. Not when she like, mind you. Shelby has a strict curfew, her parents aren’t insane, but she’s relatively free to be who she wants to be. 

Shelby’s still crying and Toni’s a little embarrassed for her. How does anyone think it’s OK to cry in front of an audience? To give her some space, Toni heads to Rook’s. She knocks on the door once, then twice before impatiently kicking its bottom and Shelby’s remembers that it’s always shocking to see how angry the woman gets, and she’s seen it, several times. Never to her but to people she’s cared about, sure. 

He’s furious when he finally gets to the door and doesn’t calm at seeing Toni. To Shelby, he’s not a tall guy but not friendly-looking either. He’s in pyjama pants with his chest covered only by a smattering of hair in uneven patches. He’s bruised around his hips and ribs, a scar or two embellished on his neck, no tattoos but track marks across the undersides of his arms. Shelby’s never seen anyone like this before. The shock has calmed her tears but she’s frightened when he peers over Toni’s shoulder and rakes his tired, dilated eyes over her face. Her heart rate pulses and she can’t look away. She can’t look away at Toni pleading with him; the girl not shocked at all by the image of Rook. 

To Toni, he’s just one of her confidants, looking pretty pissed she woke him up. It’s not that late but the guy sleeps when he’s not entertaining his guests so distinguishing the daytime from the night has become futile. What’s the point when days blur together?

“I’ll do it in the morning,” Shelby hears from Rook, rubbing his eyes and slamming the door in front of Toni’s face. The girl has just enough time to step back away from its frame before it smacks into her own. Toni explains that her friend will try to replace the tyres in the morning with spares in the pileup but Shelby’s struggling to listen; shocked at the term ‘friend’ but also fearing that she will have to stay in her car tonight. Here, in this area. She knows she isn’t safe here.

Shelby comes to drop off Toni’s assignments because she’s on the student committee: it’s her job to look after her fellow students. She hasn’t been instructed to do so but she takes her responsibilities very seriously. Honestly, she doesn’t mind driving 40 minutes every evening, as soon as she has finished family prayer and scoffed dinner made by her parents, to do her duties. She remembers that it should be something to care about when her car rumbles over the gravel, leading up to the trailer park. It always looks the same. The only things that change are items in the junk pile, Shelby notes. Things catch her eye, and she takes a closer look. If an investigator asked for an eye-witness testimony of her experiences at the trailer park, all she would remember is what’s in the pile and those noises.

It could be a wolf. She heard it sometimes but surely there are no wolves around these parts. Sometimes she hears scratching, clawing and Shelby thinks: definitely animals. Three times now, ever since last week, she’s even heard somebody moaning. Definitely a woman, always too loud to be coming from inside one of the homes. People talk about what happens in this part of town: nocuous activities, of the selling drugs and selling sex types. Shelby has nothing to do with those people. She sees her Dad, sometimes, give interventions to folks who have taken that direction in life. He tries to help them, but I don’t think it does any good. 

The first time, hearing a woman moan so brazenly shook Shelby to her core. Her face flushed and heart pounded but she ran as far away from the noise as she could. She didn’t want to see that sort of thing or be witness to anything she shouldn’t. After all, she knows she would only be good at remembering all the random junk that’s piled high like a treasure. Not anything useful. So, she ran because she should not here. It wasn’t until she was safe inside her car, driving again on the smooth roads closer to home, that she let herself think about the noise. 

There’s no question it was sexual in nature; Shelby knows that. Even though she would never admit to making them herself or searching for videos that have those noises on the internet. Definitely not. She just knew. Shelby’s intuitive like that. It came from a woman and it came from a woman doing unspeakable things outside. She wonders why they were outside. Were they not cold? Scared of being caught? So unashamed that they didn’t care about being seen? 

If Shelby ever did do something like that, to produce those noises, it would not be outside and it would not be so loud and inviting for everyone in the whole neighbourhood to hear. But she wouldn’t do something like that. Not again, anyway.

“I wasn’t watching you, by the way,” Toni says, interrupting her thoughts. “Or I was a little bit. I saw your truck pull up. And I’m sorry, by the way, that someone did this to you. But you should have been more careful.” Excuse her?

“Me? I should have been more careful?” Shelby exclaims, throwing her hands up, gesticulating with more anger than Toni’s ever seen the woman perform. “I came here to help you. To bring your work. To be an upstanding student and your peer because we both agreed to tutoring. You promised you would make an effort but you’re never at school. So, I have to come here. For you.”  
“Who asked you to come here? I know I didn’t. I know the teachers don’t give a shit. I know Coach Klein wants me to learn my own lessons – she wouldn’t ask anyone to throw me a rope.” Toni’s always gotten angry quickly. Her skin’s often hot to touch, red and angry in places, soft in others where white tissue’s grown over its damage. She especially gets angry when she’s guilty or feels to blame. She’s often a let-down, Toni knows this, but fuck the reminders are a killer.

“Look. You don’t have any right to get frustrated, right now. I do. This is my car. This is what I bought with my own savings and my allowance so I can have something that is truly mine and nobody else’s. I come here and it’s damaged.” Shelby’s trying to explain but she knows the girl has no idea. You see, Toni’s free. Foster families can suck, Shelby could imagine that. But surely, when they suck, that means nobody’s in charge of her, right? Toni doesn’t have a curfew or rules imposed on who she can or can’t be friends with. Toni doesn’t have to explain everywhere she goes, or why her grades have been slipping since the summer. Toni doesn’t have to explain why she’s 'suddenly so interested in basketball.' 

Shelby finds herself saying all of this. Maybe, not the basketball bit, but everything else spills from her lips before she’s entirely aware she’s even talking. Toni doesn’t let her finish before interrupting with her own rant about not going on school trips because she has nobody to sign the permission slips or fearing for her life when she hears people creeping around in the dead of night. Or how she’s always had to fight with her fists because people much larger than her won’t listen to a verbal defence. Shelby and Toni exhaust themselves with explanations neither has asked for.

Toni walks toward her hideaway and she doesn’t have to ask if Shelby’s coming with her, she can hear the pattering of footsteps echoing her own. Toni checks the trove of junk again, confirming her winner’s medal is gone. She doesn’t remember why she put it there. She does remember, moving into this place around eight months ago now and finding her stash of silverware in an old Adidas bag. It was around the time that school had officially given up on her. Coach Klein had dropped her from the team and Toni was sure that she would never redeem herself. She threw all the reminders of her basketball success in the trash: trophies, winner’s medals, player medals, but kept one. Not a particularly pretty one, but her first one. It always reminded Toni of why she played in the first place.

It was an outlet for her anger and passion. She stayed playing when she turned 12, joining a local boys’ team. She had officially been removed from her mother’s care, the second time, but authorities insisted it would be the last time. She felt abandoned and furious. Her first foster family, well, that didn’t last long, but the Dad was a sports coach. He was fed up with Toni beating the shit out of the kids in the neighbourhood that picked on her because she was small. He wanted her to prove her size and her strength and her power and put her energy into something she can work hard for. To give her life meaning, some kind of intention or purpose. Even if she was quickly released from their home, after he was convicted of showing too much interest in the little girls in his care, playing basketball helped. Just now, every time she shoots, she imagines the hoop as fire and his face on the ball moving directly, and perfectly, for it. Toni’s still happy to fight, especially when she’s knocked off her aim and he doesn’t land in the pit of hell as she intends, but at least now she fights for a cause. 

Shelby climbs onto the back of Toni’s pickup with ease as it’s familiar to her own, she would guess. Though she struggles to manoeuvre around the hanging branches and is smacked in the side of the head by a particularly forceful one. Toni does her best to contain a laugh, but Shelby spotted it and Shelby’s face rages once again. She shakes it off with a literal shake of her shoulders, stretching her neck and arching her back. Toni does that at the start of a game or the start of a fight. Shelby does that to cool off and it works. A smile rests delicately on her face after composing herself; pearly whites glistening at Toni through the evening sky. It’s tired but it’s beautiful, you would be a fool not to see that. 

“It’s been a while since you were last here.” Toni reclines on the blankets and pillows she has set-up against the truck’s rear window and gestures for Shelby to join her. It takes a minute or two, but she does. Shelby doesn’t think she can resist an offer like that, but she knows that she should. She knows that her family wouldn’t condone something like this. It’s just rest, no funny business, but it’s too close. Too close to another woman. Resting in the arms of another woman. 

Toni beckons her with one hand and stretches out an arm to accommodate Shelby’s form. It’s a small truck but it’s not a tight space for two women to lay, side-by-side. Especially not one when one slowly collapses her body half on top of the other: Shelby’s head buried in the crook between Toni’s arm and her shoulder, head turned away from the stars and buried into her bronzed neck; one arm lain and crooked under Toni’s, the other rested on her chest; knee stroking Toni’s thigh but not weighted. 

No, her Dad would not be happy.

“Sometimes, when I’m here, dropping off your work, I hear these noises. From animals, I thought at first. It always struck me with some kind of fear that I would be in danger or you would be, because of what’s lurking out here,” Shelby says smoothly under her Texan drawl. “But it’s so quiet. I can’t hear any animals, or your family, or your neighbours. I can’t hear any cars or motorcycles. I can just hear your heart.”

“Thank, God, sometimes I forget I have one.” Shelby forgot how much she laughs with Toni. She quickly sits upright, hitting the chest of the girl beneath her then holding the material of her tank top between dainty, porcelain fingers, rubbing it together. Lifting her body away from Toni gives Shelby the chance to observe the girl again: the slightly bushy eyebrows, tiny scars around her eyes and the smattering of freckles or beauty marks close to her lips. 

It’s been a while since she’s seen her like this. It’s been a while since they’ve been so close. Close to touch, to smell. Shelby still smells of flowers – of course, she fucking does. Toni knows she has fresh flowers in her bedroom constantly, picking them herself from growth near the farm. She looks after them meticulously but when they inevitably die, she uses their corpses as bookmarks, decoration, chains, anything to make their life and death cycle purposeful. To Toni, she always smells good. Her hair products and body lotion: fresh… expensive. Her body spritz: distinctively neutral as not to arise suspicion in her parents that she’s out to impress anybody. 

In Shelby’s defence and the defence she has been rehearsing since the summer just in case, she never was out to impress anybody. She didn’t intend for any of this to happen. She didn’t intend for that to happen. But it did and she regretted it for a time. It disrupted her schoolwork; she couldn’t focus on anything. Shelby’s many responsibilities started to plummet in performance, and she was regretful, scared and wildly unhappy. It wasn’t that, that filled Shelby with regret or sadness. Or maybe a little. It was what was she did after that happened that eats away at her to this day. 

It surprises her that Toni’s willing to hold her again like this. Shelby justifies that it’s just the woman protecting her, not wanting the girl to sleep alone in her car or walk alone in the dark or call for help because who would she call for help? Deep down Shelby knows the girl still cares for her. What they had was weird and it was quick. So quick. Before she knew anything was happening between them or realised they had anything to cherish, it was over. 

To Shelby, Toni was unattainable: her family’s worst nightmare. Once upon a time, she was the living embodiment of all Shelby’s fears, too. Toni fights and curses; she mocks faith and her acts of sacrilege repeat like sport. Toni smokes, uses drugs and has sex just because she wants to do. She sleeps with women, unashamedly takes them on public dates, holds their hands, kisses them against brick walls of the school or the movie theatre. Toni is unapologetically Toni and Shelby shouldn’t like her. But she’s here again, in the girl’s arms, just like last summer. Toni’s stroking her forearm and looking at Shelby like she’s the one to hang the sky’s stars. Shelby’s hand strokes from the centre of Toni’s chest, down her navel and back up again, over and over, trying to avoid the girl’s eyes but failing miserably.

Shelby wants to kiss her again, just like last summer. 

Shelby wants to do a lot of things with Toni again, just like last summer.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written anything that isn’t an assignment or a research paper in years so be nice.
> 
> Should be 3 parts to this. I haven’t got anything else written yet but I have notes and motivation (and a shed load of studying to do). Hope to produce something more soon!


End file.
